Shogun (The Asian Saga Chronology) (38 page)

"Mine spend their time practicing archery, swordsmanship, riding, and shooting."

"Mine add poetry, penmanship, flower arranging, the
cha-no-yu
ceremony.  Samurai should be well versed in the arts of peace to be strong for the arts of war."

"Most of my men are already more than proficient in those arts," Ishido said, conscious that his own writing was poor and his learning limited.  "Samurai are birthed for war.  I understand war very well.  That is enough at the moment.  That and obedience to our Master's will."

"Yaemon's swimming lesson is at the Hour of the Horse."  The day and the night were each split into six equal parts.  The day began with the Hour of the Hare, from 5 A.M. to 7 A.M., then the Dragon, from 7 A.M. to 9 A.M.  The hours of the Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Cock, Dog, Boar, Rat and Ox followed, and the cycle ended with the Hour of the Tiger between 3 A.M. and 5 A.M.  "Would you like to join the lesson?"

"Thank you, no.  I'm too old to change my ways," Ishido said thinly.

"I hear the captain of your men was ordered to commit seppuku."

"Naturally.  The bandits should have been caught.  At least one of them should have been caught.  Then we would have found the others."

"I'm astounded that such carrion could operate so close to the castle."

"I agree.  Perhaps the barbarian could describe them."

"What would a barbarian know?"  Toranaga laughed.  "As to the bandits, they were
ronin,
weren't they? 
Ronin
are plentiful among your men.  Inquiries there might prove fruitful. 
Neh?
"

"Inquiries are being pressed.  In many directions."  Ishido passed over the veiled sneer about
ronin,
the masterless, almost outcast mercenary samurai who had, in their thousands, flocked to the Heir's banner when Ishido had whispered it abroad that he, on behalf of the Heir and the mother of the Heir, would accept their fidelity, would—incredibly—forgive and forget their indiscretions or past, and would, in the course of time, repay their loyalty with a Taikō's lavishness.  Ishido knew that it had been a brilliant move.  It gave him an enormous pool of trained samurai to draw upon; it guaranteed loyalty, for
ronin
knew they would never get another such chance; it brought into his camp all the angry ones, many of whom had been made
ronin
by Toranaga's conquests and those of his allies.  And lastly, it removed a danger to the realm—an increase in the bandit population—for almost the only supportable way of life open to a samurai unlucky enough to become
ronin
was to become a monk or bandit.

"There are many things I don't understand about this ambush," Ishido said, his voice tinged with venom.  "Yes.  Why, for instance, should bandits try to capture this barbarian for ransom?  There are plenty of others in the city, vastly more important.  Isn't that what the bandit said?  It was ransom he wanted.  Ransom from whom?  What's the barbarian's value?  None.  And how did they know where he would be?  It was only yesterday that I gave the order to bring him to the Heir, thinking it would amuse the boy.  Very curious."

"Very." Toranaga said.

"Then there's the coincidence of Lord Yabu being in the vicinity with some of your men and some of mine at that exact time.  Very curious."

"Very.  Of course he was there because I had sent for him, and your men were there because we agreed—at your suggestion—that it was good policy and a way to begin to heal the breach between us, that your men accompany mine wherever they go while I'm on this official visit."

"It is also strange that the bandits who were sufficiently brave and well organized to slay the first ten without a fight acted like Koreans when our men arrived.  The two sides were equally matched.  Why didn't the bandits fight, or take the barbarian into the hills immediately, and not stupidly stay on a main path to the castle?  Very curious."

"Very.  I'll certainly be taking double guards with me tomorrow when I go hawking.  Just in case.  It's disconcerting to know bandits are so close to the castle.  Yes.  Perhaps you'd like to hunt, too?  Fly one of your hawks against mine?  I'll be hunting the hills to the north."

"Thank you, no.  I'll be busy tomorrow.  Perhaps the day after?  I've ordered twenty thousand men to sweep all the forests, woods, and glades around Osaka.  There won't be a bandit within twenty
ri
in ten days.  That I can promise you."

Toranaga knew that Ishido was using the bandits as an excuse to increase the number of his troops in the vicinity.  If he says twenty, he means fifty.  The neck of the trap is closing, he told himself.  Why so soon?  What new treachery has happened?  Why is Ishido so confident?  "Good.  Then the day after tomorrow, Lord Ishido.  You'll keep your men away from my hunting area?  I wouldn't want my game disturbed," he added thinly.

"Of course.  And the barbarian?"

"He is and always was my property.  And his ship.  But you can have him when I've finished with him.  And afterwards you can send him to the execution ground if you wish."

"Thank you.  Yes, I'll do that."  Ishido closed his fan and slipped it into his sleeve.  "He's unimportant.  What is important and the reason for my coming to see you is that—oh, by the way, I heard that the lady, my mother, is visiting the Johji monastery."

"Oh?  I would have thought the season's a little late for looking at cherry blossoms.  Surely they'd be well past their prime now?"

"I agree.  But then if she wishes to see them, why not?  You can never tell with the elderly, they have minds of their own and see things differently,
neh?
  But her health isn't good.  I worry about her.  She has to be very careful—she takes a chill very easily."

"It's the same with my mother.  You have to watch the health of the old."  Toranaga made a mental note to send an immediate message to remind the abbot to watch over the old woman's health very carefully.  If she were to die in the monastery the repercussions would be terrible.  He would be shamed before the Empire.  All
daimyos
would realize that in the chess game for power he had used a helpless old woman, the mother of his enemy, as a pawn, and failed in his responsibility to her.  Taking a hostage was, in truth, a dangerous ploy.

Ishido had become almost blind with rage when he had heard that his revered mother was in the Toranaga stronghold at Nagoya.  Heads had fallen.  He had immediately brought forward plans for Toranaga's destruction, and had taken a solemn resolve to invest Nagoya and obliterate the
daimyo,
Kazamaki—in whose charge she had ostensibly been—the moment hostilities began.  Last, a private message had been sent to the abbot through intermediaries, that unless she was brought safely out of the monastery within twenty-four hours, Naga, the only son of Toranaga within reach and any of his women that could be caught, would, unhappily, wake up in the leper village, having been fed by them, watered by them, and serviced by one of their whores.  Ishido knew that while his mother was in Toranaga's power he had to tread lightly.  But he had made it clear that if she was not let go, he would set the Empire to the torch.  "How is the lady, your mother, Lord Toranaga," he asked politely.

"She's very well, thank you."  Toranaga allowed his happiness to show, both at the thought of his mother and at the knowledge of Ishido's impotent fury.  "She's remarkably fit for seventy-four.  I only hope I'm as strong as she is when I'm her age."

You're fifty-eight, Toranaga, but you'll never reach fifty-nine, Ishido promised himself.  "Please give her my best wishes for a continued happy life.  Thank you again and I'm sorry that you were inconvenienced."  He bowed with great politeness, and then, holding in his soaring pleasure with difficulty, he added, "Oh, yes, the important matter I wanted to see you about was that the last formal meeting of the Regents has been postponed.  We do not meet tonight at sunset."

Toranaga kept the smile on his face but inside he was rocked.  "Oh?  Why?"

"Lord Kiyama's sick.  Lord Sugiyama and Lord Onoshi have agreed to the delay.  So did I.  A few days are unimportant, aren't they, on such important matters?"

"We can have the meeting without Lord Kiyama."

"We have agreed that we should not."  Ishido's eyes were taunting.

"Formally?"

"Here are our four seals."

Toranaga was seething.  Any delay jeopardized him immeasurably.  Could he barter Ishido's mother for an immediate. meeting?  No, because it would take too much time for the orders to go back and forth and he would have conceded a very great advantage for nothing.  "When will the meeting be?"

"I understand Lord Kiyama should be well tomorrow, or perhaps the next day."

"Good.  I'll send my personal physician to see him."

"I'm sure he'd appreciate that.  But his own has forbidden any visitors.  The disease might be contagious,
neh?
"

"What disease?"

"I don't know, my Lord.  That's what I was told."

"Is the doctor a barbarian?"

"Yes.  I understand the chief doctor of the Christians.  A Christian doctor-priest for a Christian
daimyo.
  Ours are not good enough for so—so important a
daimyo,
" Ishido said with a sneer.

Toranaga's concern increased.  If the doctor were Japanese, there were many things he could do.  But with a Christian doctor—inevitably a Jesuit priest—well, to go against one of them, or even to interfere with one of them, might alienate all Christian
daimyos,
which he could not afford to risk.  He knew his friendship with Tsukku-san would not help him against the Christian
daimyos
Onoshi or Kiyama.  It was in Christian interests to present a united front.  Soon he would have to approach them, the barbarian priests, to make an arrangement, to find out the price of their cooperation.  If Ishido truly has Onoshi and Kiyama with him—and all the Christian
daimyos
would follow these two if they acted jointly—then I'm isolated, he thought.  Then my only way left is Crimson Sky.

"I'll visit Lord Kiyama the day after tomorrow," he said, naming a deadline.

"But the contagion?  I'd never forgive myself if anything happened to you while you're here in Osaka, my Lord.  You are our guest, in my care. I must insist you do not."

"You may rest comfortably, my Lord Ishido, the contagion that will topple me has not yet been born,
neh?
  You forget the soothsayer's prediction."  When the Chinese embassy had come to the Taikō six years ago to try to settle the Japanese-Korean-Chinese war, a famous astrologer had been among them.  This Chinese had forecast many things that had since come true.  At one of the Taikō's incredibly lavish ceremonial dinners, the Taikō had asked the soothsayer to predict the deaths of certain of his counselors.  The astrologer had said that Toranaga would die by the sword when he was middle-aged.  Ishido, the famous conqueror of Korea—or Chosen as Chinese called that land—would die undiseased, an old man, his feet firm in the earth, the most famous man of his day.  But the Taikō himself would die in his bed, respected, revered, of old age, leaving a healthy son to follow him.  This had so pleased the Taikō, who was still childless, that he had decided to let the embassy return to China and not kill them as he had planned for their previous insolences.  Instead of negotiating for peace as he had expected, the Chinese Emperor, through this embassy, had merely offered to "invest him as King of the Country of Wa," as the Chinese called Japan.  So he had sent them home alive and not in the very small boxes that had already been prepared for them, and renewed the war against Korea and China.

"No, Lord Toranaga, I haven't forgotten," Ishido said, remembering very well.  "But contagion can be uncomfortable.  Why be uncomfortable?  You could catch the pox like your son Noboru, so sorry—or become a leper like Lord Onoshi.  He's still young, but he suffers.  Oh, yes, he suffers."

Momentarily Toranaga was thrown off balance.  He knew the ravages of both diseases too well.  Noboru, his eldest living son, had caught the Chinese pox when he was seventeen—ten years ago—and all the cures of the doctors, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Christian, had not managed to allay the disease which had already defaced him but would not kill him.  If I become all powerful, Toranaga promised himself, perhaps I can stamp out that disease.  Does it really come from women?  How do women get it?  How can it be cured?  Poor Noboru, Toranaga thought.  Except for the pox you'd be my heir, because you're a brilliant soldier, a better administrator than Sudara, and very cunning.  You must have done many bad things in a previous life to have had to carry so many burdens in this one.

"By the Lord Buddha, I'd not wish either of those on anyone," he said.

"I agree," Ishido said, believing Toranaga would wish them both on him if he could.  He bowed again and left.

Toranaga broke the silence.  "Well?"

Hiro-matsu said, "If you stay or leave now, it's the same—disaster, because now you've been betrayed and you are isolated, Sire.  If you stay for the meeting—you won't get a meeting for a week—Ishido will have mobilized his legions around Osaka and you'll never escape, whatever happens to the Lady Ochiba in Yedo, and clearly Ishido's decided to risk her to get you.  It's obvious you're betrayed and the four Regents will make a decision against you.  A four against one vote in Council impeaches you.  If you leave, they'll still issue whatever orders lshido wishes.  You're bound to uphold a four-to-one decision.  You swore to do it.  You cannot go against your solemn word as a Regent."

"I agree."

The silence held.

Hiro-matsu waited, with growing anxiety.  "What are you going to do?"

"First I'm going to have my swim," Toranaga said with surprising joviality.  "Then I'll see the barbarian."

The woman walked quietly through Toranaga's private garden in the castle toward the little thatched hut that was set so prettily in a glade of maples.  Her silk kimono and obi were the most simple yet the most elegant that the most famous craftsmen in China could make.  She wore her hair in the latest Kyoto fashion, piled high and held in place with long silver pins.  A colorful sunshade protected her very fair skin.  She was tiny, just five feet, but perfectly proportioned.  Around her neck was a thin golden chain, and hanging from it, a small golden crucifix.